Johnston Ridge, the main tourism viewpoint, remains closed due to a bridge washout.  Coldwater Science Center is open as a replacement.  19 Mile House Restaurant is closed this summer.  

On the "good news" side, the brand new Drew's Grocery is up and running. The Mount St. Helens Visitor Center and Seaquest State Park have finished renovations and are fully open again.  The flower baskets and displays in Castle Rock are in full bloom and are stunning this year.  Swing through town and enjoy the blooms, along with the local shops.  Rivers are warming and refreshing on hot days, and the South Toutle is particularly popular with families.  Stop by Harry Gardner Park to enjoy the river.  

It is finally time to read, study and comment on the new EIS for the Spirit Lake outflow project.  The EIS re-examines the drainage tunnel that keeps Spirit Lake from overflowing and causing a catastrophic downstream flood, and offers additional measures to supplement or replace the current tunnel.  This process has been YEARS in the making, and most likely, before any dirt is turned or rock is moved, many more years (and millions of additional dollars) will pass. Gifford Pinchot National Forest | Spirit Lake Outflow Safety Improvement Project | Forest Service

Hoffstadt Hills-- Back in the mid-1980's the sediment retention structure (aka sediment dam) was built across the North Toutle River without any mitigation except a fish trap to move salmon.  The massive impacts of the sediment plain to fish and wildlife and people remain.  The impacted area was transferred to the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife for "habitat and recreation" but without legal public access for any recreation!    In fact, there is a place where a tiny 200-foot wide strip of Weyerhaeuser land blocks access to public land.  (I asked Weyerhaeuser years ago to allow hikers to cross this strip without buying a company permit, but they said no!)   But all that might soon be changing because the WDFW has been awarded a grant to purchase some of the land between the Wildlife Area and the Spirit Lake Highway.  The Toutle community has been advocating for an access solution for years.  More to come as the potential sale progresses.   

The new administration is cutting costs and employees across most federal agencies, and the US Forest Service is no exception.  This follows on the heels of an announcement that no seasonal staff would be hired in 2025 except for firefighting.  Of course, we on-the-ground know that seasonal workers do most of the 'real work' at the agency.  Seasonal workers cater to summertime visitors to national forests by clearing trails, answering questions, and cleaning restrooms.  Permanent staff are often bound to a desk in an office.  When I worked for the Forest Service (as a seasonal employee), it was this way, too.  College students helping the public and cleaning up, while permanent staff dealt with all the processes of government in the back, like purchasing.  If we ran out of pencils, there was no stopping at Walmart to pick some up.  Everything had to be ordered from a special catalog of 'approved' sellers.  Ugh.  

To add my two cents to this cost-cutting debate, I believe what an agency like the USFS needs is not so much to cut "waste, fraud, and abuse" but to cut PROCESS.  Any look on the Forest Service website under their projects page gives you an idea of the monumental pile of paper and staff time that is needed to just complete a simple task.  For example, the plan to remove the rotting Elk Bench restroom on the Lakes Trail is over a dozen pages.  The project is ok'ed for a quick "categorical exclusion" instead of a full NEPA review, but even so, it required SEVEN additional legal considerations beyond NEPA.  On top of this, NINE separate government specialists, from a botanist, archeologist, hydrologist, biologist, to historian and recreation specialist had to review it.  Most chose not to make a site visit, but imagine the staff time costs for these specialists just to reach a remote site like this: driving, hiking, and poking around.  EIGHT presidential executive orders had to be considered, ranging from migratory birds and hunting access to tribal consultation and environmental justice.  The entire toilet removal process will take about two years (they hope to actually remove the toilet in June of 2026.)

Now imagine what it would take for the USFS to do something a bit larger, like fix a washed out road or bridge.  A forester once told me what it was like to work on such a thing with the USFS.  He had a Forest Service easement road go through his private timberland before it reached the national forest.  They both used the road and it washed out in a bad rainstorm.  The USFS engineer came out and looked at the problem.  "This is a bad one; it will take two years; cost over a million dollars".  The private forester knew it was a fix his road contractor (following all state laws) could have done in a few weeks at a fraction of the cost.  The private forester offered to fix the washout and cost share with the federal agency.  Finding a way around the bloated federal process saved everyone alot of time and money with the same end result: an repaired road and a clean environment.  I hope some of that logic makes into the current cost-cutting push.

The Mount St. Helens Institute, the Washington Trails Association, and the Forest Service have teamed up to provide a network of linking trails in the Coldwater Lake area.  The plan would add another trail that connects the Coldwater Center with the Lake, and then a new linkage to the Hummocks Trail.  From there, another obvious need is a link to the South Coldwater Trailhead.  The location of this last trail, in particular, is a bit tricky because of all the wetlands and South Coldwater Creek that must be navigated.  In total they are proposing 2.7 miles of new trails, with most linkages paved, but the last, steeper portion that drops from the Coldwater Science Center to Coldwater Lake will be unpaved.  This is a great and long-overdue improvement and I look forward to seeing these trails actually get built (scheduled for 2026).  

Gifford Pinchot National Forest - Home  

(What I predicted in this post has come true--the USFS resuscitated their previous restrictions in April of 2024). For decades Forest Service land along the Spirit Lake Highway has been heavily posted with government "no trespassing" signs. People hopping out of their cars to get a better view or find a place for their kids to play in the snow, were confronted with these infamous brown signs.  The signs are also liberally placed around the visitor centers and along Coldwater Lake.  They are still there, but the "administrative closure" behind them has been finally allowed to mercifully die after being kept artificially alive for nearly 30 years.  

So for now, I will celebrate.  And plan some new adventures.  

I've been fighting these improper closures this whole time.  (oops, there slips my age!)  I started with a petition back in 1993 to allow snow travel on logging roads on land that had just been acquired from Weyerhaeuser.  These lands were located between the (then new) Spirit Lake Highway and the original Monument boundary.  The public agency acquired them, then immediately posted them closed to the public. These lands were deemed so sensitive that no entry was allowed, despite the fact that since the eruption this land had been salvage logged, replanted, and used as a highway construction site!  The USFS said "NO" to my petition.  I knew it was simply heavy-handed crowd control.  Thus began my long fight to improve access at Mount St. Helens. 

I studied the Monument's 1985 management plan, and what I found was stunning: None of the land accessed by the Spirit Lake Highway was ever supposed to be closed like this.  In fact, 30,000 acres was improperly (via the back door) placed under an "administrative closure".  These type of closures are designed for short term emergencies like fires or floods, but Mount St. Helens used them to circumvent the guidelines of their own plan.  

In earlier blogs I hinted that the Forest Service might have let some of its "administrative closures" lapse.  This appears to be the case. It turns out, that those longterm closures were illegal.  If you check the Forest Service website here Gifford Pinchot National Forest - Alerts & Notices (usda.gov) you can see the current closure orders.  

What this means:  It is LEGAL to explore the public lands of the Monument, off trail, as long as you stay off the volcano itself and away from the construction sites by Spirit Lake.  This is the current condition, but the Forest Service could revert back to more short-term closures if they want.  To prevent this, the public must not create user trails or cut switchbacks as they roam.  Stay on the trail is still good etiquette in highly popular areas.  Off-trail travel away from developed sites is now not illegal.  What this means is experienced off-trail hikers can walk from the Spirit Lake Highway to Castle Lake (or Spirit Lake) if they choose.  Coldwater Lake is more accessible.  The Forest Service, however, doesn't want anyone to really know about this change, so the signs are still there and you will find no PR announcement that 30,000 acres is now open to cross-country travel.  I'm the only one talking.  (It should be noted that disobeying a sign is still illegal, and the USFS has not removed any signs.)

UPDATE--I hope you all had a chance to explore for the single year that the regulations were lapsed because they are back and as restrictive as ever.